Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Why Does the World Exist?

That’s the question posed by Jim Holt in his new book by
that title. He goes around interviewing physicists and metaphysicians, and lots
of nonsense gets scattered here and there, along with some intriguing insights
and speculations.

However, Why questions are seldom worth asking (as my dad
always said). We’d be better off asking, “What
is the world?” Or better still, “Why do I
exist?”

“Why” questions are really concerned with one of two things.
They’re concerned with motivation or with explication, and the former can
usually be transformed to the later without much difficulty. I might ask
someone, “Why did you put that CD by the Cocteau Twins on the stereo just now?”
Was it simply to irritate me? Perhaps not. Perhaps you actually like this
stuff. If so, then the question becomes, “What do you hear? What draws you to
this sound?” I hear the music, but evidently I’m not really hearing it. What is really going on
here?

To suggest that the question Why Does the World Exist? is a
hunt for motives would be to suggest that someone made the world and we want to
know why he or she did so. It carries obvious theological overtones.

In fact,
when this question arises, it’s usually simply a way of expressing the
dumfounding realization that there is
no real reason for all this stuff we see and engage and live through. There is
no motive behind it. There might just as easily have been nothing as something.

Such thoughts tickle the fancy of some. In others they
strike a note of unspeakable terror. Yet others at least occasionally become
rapt in awe at the situation they find themselves in—alive amidst an
inexplicable universe. I would put myself in the last category.

It seems to me that most religious sentiment arises as a
very imperfect means to express the marvel of existence, both personal and
cosmic. Yet in so far as such sentiments become encoded in holy books and
liturgical texts, they tend to take on a mindless rhetorical quality. They lose
their luster.

Does the fact that the universe exists prove that God
exists? I think that argument could be made convincingly, though many of the
voices in Jim Holt’s book would, I suspect, reject such an inference. It would probably be closer to the truth to say that God is the universe than merely to say that he or she made the universe. But in the end, the argument is less important than the
feeling underlying it. It’s a love feeling—me and the universe—and the
challenge lies in expanding and extending it before it fades of its own accord
or becomes institutionalized and loses its luster.

About Me

The Macaroni blog is dedicated to the subjects that have enlivened the print edition of Macaroni for more than twenty-five years - travel, films, food, ideas, music ... you name it. My name is John Toren. I write the blog. If you're interested in lengthier forays into the same fields track down a copy of my new book,All the Things You Are or my previous book By the Way. For a closer look at the state of Minnesota, check out my travel book, The Seven States of Minnesota.